Variational Raises $50M to Build RFQ Crypto Perps and RWA Trading Platform

Variational has raised $50 million in a Series A led by Dragonfly, with backing from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures, to push a simple but potent idea: crypto trading needs better execution, not more circus acts.

• $50 million Series A led by Dragonfly
• Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures joined the round
• Omni uses an RFQ system to source prices across venues
• Zero trading fees, with revenue from spreads and order flow
• Expansion into RWA perpetuals, institutional options, and South Korea

The onchain perpetuals trading firm says it has already surpassed $200 billion in cumulative trading volume and cracked the top tier of onchain perps platforms in just 6 to 8 months after launch. That’s not nothing. In a sector packed with loud promises and half-baked token cosplay, fast adoption still matters.

Founder Lucas Schuermann is not interested in being framed as “the next Hyperliquid.” He thinks that misses the point entirely. Variational is not trying to win by building another exchange order book and begging market makers to sit there and do all the hard work. It is betting that traders care more about cheap, reliable execution than the prestige of a public order book with a fancy logo slapped on top.

“Competing head-on with major market makers on an exchange order book wasn’t the right answer.”

That’s the crux. In Schuermann’s view, crypto markets do not suffer from a shortage of interest so much as a shortage of low-cost market structure. Or, put bluntly, a lot of “liquidity problems” are really just expensive plumbing. Fix the plumbing and the market tends to get less stupid.

Variational’s retail app, Omni, is built around a request for quote, or RFQ, model. Instead of matching traders against a single onchain order book, Omni asks multiple venues and dealers for prices, compares them, and routes flow where execution is best. That can reduce slippage — the annoying gap between the price you expect and the price you actually get — while also cutting friction for traders who just want a decent fill without paying through the nose for it.

For readers less deep in the weeds: perpetual futures, or perps, are derivative contracts with no expiry date. They let traders take leveraged exposure to an asset without owning it outright. In crypto, they’ve become one of the most important trading products because they offer speed, leverage, and nonstop access. The downside, of course, is that they can also turn markets into a blender if risk controls are sloppy. Fun for the degens, less fun for the people who have to clean up the mess.

Omni currently supports around 450 perpetual markets and advertises zero trading fees. That sounds like wizardry until you remember that someone always pays. Variational says it monetizes through spreads — the difference between buy and sell prices — and order flow, meaning the stream of trading activity it can route and match efficiently. So yes, the headline says zero fees. The economics are still very real.

That model is also why Schuermann is shrugging off the obvious comparison to Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid has become the best-known name in onchain derivatives, but the two businesses are aiming at different structures. Hyperliquid leans more toward the exchange model. Variational is trying to behave more like a broker and liquidity aggregator, something closer to a crypto-native version of Robinhood than a pure order-book venue.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A public order book can be elegant, but only if enough liquidity shows up and stays there. If not, you get spreads, slippage, and a sad little market that looks decentralized in the same way a broken vending machine is “automated.” Variational’s pitch is that the smarter move is to connect capital and prices across venues rather than force everyone to dance around one thin book.

Schuermann’s background gives the thesis some weight. He worked at Goldman Sachs and Google, met co-founder Edward Yu at Columbia University, and the pair later founded Qu, a hedge fund/business that was acquired by Digital Currency Group. Both also held senior roles at Genesis. In other words, this is not a random team throwing darts at a whiteboard after too many conference cocktails.

He also points back to an earlier era of crypto trading, when ETH was still in the tens of dollars, as evidence that demand for leverage and speculation has always been there. The difference now is that the infrastructure is much better prepared to handle it.

And that infrastructure is not staying crypto-only.

Variational is moving into real-world asset perpetuals, or RWA perps, which are perpetual futures tied to assets outside crypto. The list includes gold, silver, copper, oil, U.S. indices, and single stocks. The company is also eyeing exposure linked to pre-IPO names like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX.

That’s a huge potential market, and also a giant pile of regulatory and operational landmines.

Schuermann’s view is that traders are no longer thinking in neat “crypto asset class” boxes.

“People aren’t thinking in a ‘crypto asset class’ box anymore.”

He’s right. Traders want leverage, access, and speed. They do not care whether the exposure is to Bitcoin, oil, the S&P 500, or a private-company proxy with a fancy ticker. If the interface is clean and the pricing is competitive, people will show up. That said, there is a fine line between financial innovation and synthesizing a new casino floor with better lighting.

RWA perpetuals could become one of the more practical bridges between onchain rails and traditional markets. They could also become a messy product category full of compliance headaches, jurisdictional problems, and synthetic exposure risk. Tokenized finance is exciting until someone asks who is legally responsible when the music stops. That’s usually when the room gets real quiet.

Variational says a second rollout this summer will add 100+ markets. It plans to hedge its flow using traditional market hubs in New York, Chicago, and Amsterdam. It has also partnered with unnamed “household name” dealer and market-making firms, which is a polite way of saying serious counterparties are at least willing to engage.

Schuermann says the company is already profitable, but it still raised capital to strengthen its balance sheet and build trust with institutions.

“To work with those institutions, you need a certain balance sheet and trust.”

That’s the part a lot of crypto bros love to ignore. Institutional trading is not just about code; it’s about credibility, capital, and risk management. If you want major dealers and market makers to route flow through your system, you need enough financial heft that nobody starts sweating the moment volatility spikes. Venture capital here is not just fuel for growth. It is also a credibility stamp.

Variational is also building Pro, an institutional platform for crypto options trading. Schuermann says parts of the options market still depend on chat-based quoting and manual settlement. That is exactly as clunky as it sounds. In a sector obsessed with smart contracts and automation, there are still corners of the market that look like they were cobbled together in a group chat and a spreadsheet. No wonder people are looking for better rails.

The next major push is South Korea. Variational is hiring there and exploring partnerships, with an eye on a market that has long had strong retail trading culture and deep crypto participation. Schuermann also said the company may pursue perpetuals tied to Korean equities, with possible geoblocking depending on regulation.

That last part matters. South Korea is a juicy market, but it is not a free-fire zone. Cross-border financial products tend to attract attention fast, especially when they involve leverage, local equities, and synthetic exposure. If Variational wants to operate there, it will need to keep one eye on demand and the other on the rulebook.

“The connectivity is already there. It’s a question of how to structure it.”

That line gets to the heart of the whole strategy. The market rails exist. The traders exist. The demand exists. The battle is over structure: who can connect everything with the least friction, the best pricing, and enough trust to make institutions comfortable.

There is a fair devil’s-advocate case here too. The more Variational resembles a broker and liquidity aggregator, the less “pure DeFi” it becomes. That may be fine — maybe even preferable — but it should be said plainly. A platform can call itself onchain all day long, yet still depend heavily on centralized counterparties, offchain hedging, and institutional balance sheets. That is not necessarily a flaw. It just means the product is a hybrid, not a cypherpunk utopia.

And that hybrid model may be exactly where the real demand sits. The market has spent years fetishizing decentralization theater while users quietly asked for better execution, lower fees, and less nonsense. Variational’s bet is that if trading gets cheap enough, the volume will follow. Not because of hype, not because of token vapor, but because people like good prices. Revolutionary concept, apparently.

What is Variational trying to do?
Variational is building a crypto trading platform for onchain perpetuals that aims to make execution cheaper and more efficient by aggregating liquidity instead of relying on a single fragile order book.

Why is this funding round important?
A $50 million Series A from Dragonfly, Bain Capital Crypto, and Coinbase Ventures suggests investors still see serious value in crypto trading infrastructure, especially products that focus on market structure rather than token hype.

How does Omni work?
Omni uses an RFQ system, or request for quote model, to ask multiple venues and dealers for prices and then route trades to the best available execution.

What are perpetual futures?
Perpetual futures are derivatives with no expiry date. Traders use them to speculate on price moves with leverage, which makes them powerful and dangerous in equal measure.

How is Variational different from Hyperliquid?
Hyperliquid is more closely associated with the exchange and order-book model, while Variational is positioning itself as a broker-style liquidity aggregator with RFQ-based execution.

What are RWA perpetuals?
RWA perpetuals are perpetual futures tied to real-world assets such as gold, oil, stock indices, single stocks, and even pre-IPO exposure to firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX.

Why is South Korea a key target?
South Korea has a strong retail trading culture and major crypto adoption, making it a promising market for expansion if the regulatory setup allows it.

What are the biggest risks?
Regulation, compliance, smart-contract risk, centralization trade-offs, and the challenge of turning a promising trading model into a durable business across multiple asset classes and jurisdictions.

For all the noise in crypto, the biggest unlocks still tend to come from the boring stuff: better execution, tighter market structure, and products people actually want to use. Variational is betting that the next wave of onchain derivatives will be won by efficiency, not spectacle. That’s a refreshingly unsexy thesis — and in crypto, unsexy is often where the real money starts to show up.